“How is she holding up?” Loretta asked, her voice a loud, maternal warmth that echoed off the metal shelves and copper pots.
“She is eating,” Eli said, setting his empty tray down on the counter. “Slowly.”
Loretta reached into a deep drawer beneath the pastry station and pulled out a thick, leather-bound binder with grease-stained edges and handwritten index tabs.
“Take her this,” Loretta said, tapping the cover of her special recipe book. “Show her page forty-two. That is the glaze her fiancé’s mother called cheap.”
Eli took the heavy book, feeling the worn leather under his fingers. “Martin is going to see us, Loretta. He told me to keep my distance.”
“Let him look,” Loretta said, leaning her hip against the counter. “He doesn’t run my kitchen, and he doesn’t tell me how to treat a guest who paid for her dinner.”
Eli carried the recipe book back into the ballroom, his rubber-soled shoes silent on the polished wood floor. He laid the open book on the table next to my water glass.
“Loretta wanted you to see the actual ingredients,” Eli said, pointing to the neat, handwritten lines of black ink.
I looked at the recipe for the bourbon glaze, written in blue ink that had faded to purple over the years. At the bottom of the page, there was a small note about the sugar ratio, signed with Loretta’s initials.
“It is local honey,” I said, tracing the handwriting. “Not corn syrup.”
“Exactly,” Eli said. “She wanted you to know we don’t skimp on the real things.”
I looked up at the high, vaulted ceiling, where three massive crystal chandeliers threw bright, yellow light over the empty tables.
Madison sitting alone at the massive head table under the bright chandeliers.
Eli walked from the kitchen doors carrying a wide silver tray. He set down a plate of bourbon-glazed meatballs and roasted green beans right in front of my empty place setting. The sweet, rich scent of the glaze drifted up into the cold air of the ballroom, mixing with the heavy perfume of the white lilies near the stage.
“This is the first course of the hot buffet,” Eli said, his voice slow and deliberate.
I looked at the mountain of food, then down at my bare ring finger, which I was twisting out of habit. My skin felt cold under the bright chandelier lights. “Thank you, Eli.”
He adjusted his black cotton apron, smoothing the heavy fabric flat against his thighs. It was dark, stiff canvas, tied in a neat double knot at his waist, smelling faintly of starch and dish soap. He stood by my chair, holding his wooden clipboard flat against his chest like a shield.
“You should eat while it is warm,” he said.
“Are you supposed to stand here?” I asked.
“I am supposed to make sure you have what you need,” Eli said. “And technically, I am studying how this works anyway. I am three semesters away from a hospitality degree at the community college.”
“Is that why you work here?”
“It pays six dollars more an hour than the campus library,” he said, looking toward the dark windows. “And my mother needs the help.”
I picked up my fork, but the silver felt heavy in my hand. “What do they teach you in a hospitality class?”
“They teach you how to make people feel welcome even when everything is going wrong,” Eli said. He looked down at the empty chairs stretching toward the back of the room. “They call it flow management.”
“Do you like guest psychology?” I asked.
“They teach you how to predict what a person wants before they even know they want it,” Eli said. He adjusted his grip on the clipboard. “But they do not teach you what to say to a bride who is sitting alone at a head table meant for twelve.”
“I do not think anyone knows what to say to that,” I said.
“My mother told me once that the hardest part of any trouble is the first hour,” Eli said. “After that, your brain starts making a plan. You just have to get through the first sixty minutes.”
“I think I am past the first sixty minutes,” I said, “and I still do not have a plan.”
I tapped the edge of a paper napkin. The gold foil initials, M and T, glinted under the crystal chandeliers. “Did they teach you what to do with sixty-five portions of beef tenderloin when the groom does not show up?”
“No,” Eli said, his voice dropping a register. “They do not have a textbook for that.”
“My father spent eighteen thousand four hundred dollars on this room,” I said, staring at the empty table. “He worked ten-hour shifts at the garage for four years to save it. I am not going to let it sit here like a monument to my own stupidity.”
“It is not stupid to trust someone,” Eli said. He shifted his weight, his black leather shoes squeaking slightly on the polished hardwood.
“Tyler told me his mother was handling the final venue payment,” I said. “He said he would bring the receipt to the rehearsal dinner.”
